Family Life

Tuesday, 14 August 2018

Katie and Sophie took their first trip to the seaside on Mummy and Daddy's wedding anniversary.

On the beach at Budleigh Salterton

Katie was very excited to see a man taking a boat off the top of a van parked next to us and for weeks afterwards kept mentioning 'boat, van, off'.

We also visited Greendale Farm Shop - somewhere close to home that we'd been meaning to visit for years. It has lots of lovely animals and even a tractor to ride on. Katie saw her first goats, donkey, pigs, peacock, ostrich and deer, all of which she was familiar with from her books. Sophie spent much of the trip crying and the rest asleep, as she did at the seaside. She is not a fan of lying down on her back or being cooped up in a car seat or bouncer.

We spent much of the rest of the month indoors as the risk of sun stroke was too high at the times of day that both children were up and about.

Katie has learned lots of sea animals and creepy crawlies in French this month and we are now learning farm animals together. We have decided that for each foreign language we are teaching her she will have one toy that 'speaks' to her exclusively in that language. Since Rufus the fox came from Germany he has begun speaking to her in German. A bear is one of the national symbols of Russia so her teddy bear will speak to her in Russian (though Mummy is only just beginning to learn this with Katie so the bear will have rather a limited vocabulary to begin with). We have yet to choose toys to speak French, Japanese or Spanish with her, but Mummy and Katie have begun learning Spanish together this month.

Sophie is quite capable of turning her whole body around, but whether she's on the floor, one of our knees or being held while standing up she often prefers to turn her head at crazy angles to see something of interest.

Katie became obsessed with counting this month and learned to count
to ten in English and French and to five in German. Wherever we are she
demands that we count random things. Usually her demands are reasonable -
count the number of eggs in a picture or horizontal wires in a fence,
but occasionally she will ask to count things like snowflakes, squares
on her gingham dress or stones in a wall. She seems most dissatisfied
when I reply 'lots'!

The bedroom is currently the place
to be, with Katie demanding to go and root through Mummy and Daddy's
drawers every couple of hours. She has begun to play dress up with our
clothes and also to have imaginary tea parties with the family and her
soft toys. Katie also enjoys learning songs and is beginning to sing
along and recite her favourite books as we read them to her.

Sophie
had a difficult month. Unlike Katie at her age she finds it very hard
to go to sleep and will scream at the top of her lungs before dropping
off. She won't sleep on the floor or in the bouncer and hates being
confined in any way. She spent much of the month crying and it felt like
having a newborn all over again. According to google she is a 'high
needs baby', but hopefully things will get easier soon. Poor Katie is
sleep deprived too due to being woken so often in the night.

Monday, 23 July 2018

Sophie became three months old in June and almost half Katie's weight. By the end of the month she was able to change direction when on her back, roll over onto her side (though unlike Katie she's been able to do that since birth) and turn a little to her left or right while on her tummy. She loves playing with toys, her hands, grabbing Mummy's hair and chewing on her dresses.

Both Katie and Sophie received a gift of Freddie the firefly (from different people). Sophie's is proving just as popular as Katie's was

Katie became a little chatterbox this month and began saying several new words a day. Unfortunately this means that she's now able to communicate and make lots of demands such as 'out', 'trip', 'home', 'bread', 'train' (when she wants to watch her favourite youtube coloured trains video). Most annoyingly she's begun asking us to 'move' for no apparent reason, simply because she wants to sit where we are!

Katie is really enjoying listening to French and demands that we put it on several times a day. Since she's now so familiar with English words I began teaching her French vocabulary in addition to her listening to language courses. She now knows more words for parts of the body than I did for my GCSE French. We shall begin learning animals next, especially those that appear in her favourite books.

Katie loves having stories read to her and Ian and I are getting pretty good at reciting several of her favourites by heart, especially those by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Katie was amazed to see that 'Stick Man' had been made into a film, but she isn't used to watching television so only got half way through before she became too restless to watch any more.

Most days Katie takes a trip to the park at the back of our house and she's now brave enough to go on some of the play equipment, including the balance beams, slide and up the steps to a little wooden bridge. Sadly there are no swings suitable for her age group so we shall have to go elsewhere for her to try some (she won't remember the ones she went on last summer).

Friday, 1 June 2018

Auntie Bryony and Uncle Mark brought Toby to Frog End for the first time. We took a trip to NT Killerton, played ball in the local park and had lots of time catching up at home.

Thanks to everyone who made the long journey south to see us.

Due to the constant cycle of feeding and winding we didn't have as many family trips out as we would have liked, but we made sure that Katie got out for some exercise most days, even if only accompanied by one parent.

NT Killerton:

A trip to Stover Country Park for Mummy's birthday

We also bought Katie a pikler triangle to exercise at home

Katie made huge strides with her vocabulary in April and May and successfully learned to identify basic colours.